Persuasive arguments in favour of (or against) a life of shite ownership

[Macscrooge]

This thread makes very interesting reading and is I'm sure an issue many of us have and do agonise over.  So here's my $0.02 worth:

For business purposes I need a reliable and presentable car and I'm fortunate enough that I can have something rather nice.  Luckily I don't feel the need to have the latest, shiniest of fastest.   Image has been mentioned above and particularly for those of us in a client-facing business it is a thing - my RX says dependable, quietly successful an probably a bit dull.  Job done! (Hence previous ownership of various Volvos, Saabs etc).  I paid cash (c£18k) for the Lex 2.5 years ago and extended the warranty to 3 years.  So by my reckoning I got essentially a new car for rather less then a third of what Lexus wanted for an actual new one.  Result.  It replaced a BMW 435d on a PCP.  I calculated that in terms of just owning the car, if I run the Lex for 3 years and then push it off a cliff (I wont!) it'll have cost no more than the BMW over the preceding 3 year period. 

My best value car ever was probably the 2004 Saab 9-5 Aero bought in August 2009 for under £4k, sold with an additional 70k miles in Jan 2013 for £1k, and maybe had £400 spent on repairs over and above routine servicing in that period.  Or the Volvo 945 bought for £250 and sold 18 months (and about £150 later) for the same £350.  Those were the days.

My only recent shiter was a Saab 9-3 floppytop.  Run on and off for for a year, broken in various ways and then laid up awaiting fettling which never happened due to lack of time/talent/inclination.  Trailered away last week.  My financial hit on the purchase/sale values was equal to about 12 days of BMW ownership.

I'm not sure that gets us any closer to a conclusion - and I don't think there is one!  Just as many views are there are of us here 😀

[Dick Cheeseburger]

40 minutes ago, brownnova said:

I love having the oldest car in the staff car park at our school. My 25 year old Volvo, or 30 year old Pontiac fits in well* amongst the shiny BMWs, Peugeots and even the odd Audi. But tbf everyone loves it if I bring the 2CV to school! 

Next oldest is a 20 year old MR2 run by one of the Science teachers. 

At least one of your colleagues also has taste!

One of my colleagues was fascinated by my MR2 a few years back and decided to buy himself a really clean, early MGF to sample two seater, floppytop life.

It lasted around a year before he sold it again; he became fed up with rain finding its way into the cabin all the time and the windows being almost permanently steamed up. 

He replaced that with an almost twenty year old Audi TT 225 floppytop and which then developed electric roof issues. He's now on his second E89 Z4 since - it's a lovely car although way too heavy and complex for my liking. 

Aside from that, we've got one fella with a scruffy P plate Defender and a TA with an old M plate Rav 4. I think that's pretty much it! 

[Macscrooge]

5 hours ago, brownnova said:

I love having the oldest car in the staff car park at our school. My 25 year old Volvo, or 30 year old Pontiac fits in well* amongst the shiny BMWs, Peugeots and even the odd Audi. But tbf everyone loves it if I bring the 2CV to school! 

Next oldest is a 20 year old MR2 run by one of the Science teachers. 

When I attended a lot of corporate meetings I used to rather enjoy the sight of my slightly tatty Saab in among the sea of black Audis.  It was probably the only car there not owned by a finance company....

[sierraman]

For some car allowance and all the rules that come with it about it being less than 3 years old etc will suit them down to the ground but the whole principle of borrowing money and all that responsibility to make the company look good goes against the grain somewhat so if ever given the choice I’d always opt for the company car if I absolutely had to have one, I know you get taxed to fuck on it but it’s a ‘get in and forget’ thing where I wouldn’t have to take any financial responsibility for the damned thing. 

A mate of mine had some fairly stringent criteria put to him by his employer for the car allowance, the money was fairly stingy at a couple of hundred a month and it had to be a ‘premium’ car so no Dacias, Fords,Vauxhall etc. Which seemed a bit unreasonable in all honesty. Thinking back as well it had to be so many stars NCAP, they put it to him under the bullshit that this was their H&S obligation but I read it as them just being wankers with him as they’d have someone else at his desk by Wednesday if he got squashed out on the road. 

[garethj]

I’ve seen some job adverts where they say “company car scheme (BMW!)”

I didn’t think it was possible to loathe a job advert, I was wrong 

[sierraman]

1 hour ago, garethj said:

I’ve seen some job adverts where they say “company car scheme (BMW!)”

I didn’t think it was possible to loathe a job advert, I was wrong 

A while back whilst idly browsing Monster or similar type site, saw an advert for a job in an estate agency for, get this, £18k a year and £200 car allowance pm, or a BMW 1 series diesel as a company car. Are these people taking the piss? You’d effectively be working to pay for the car. 

[twosmoke300]

On 5/30/2022 at 12:08 PM, St.Jude said:

Pros:

• When they go wrong, for all the shit they bring, it can be quite rewarding to fix them and save them for another day
• A new part can prolong the life of a car for years
• Older cars (up to mid-2000's I think) trust the driver more, so less of the cars functions are hidden behind a computer
• New cars tend to bring their own bullshit, such as DPF, AdBlue etc
• New cars tend not to be as comfortable as older cars in terms of ride
• Older cars tend to bring you in to a community of people who aren't dickheads. New cars tend to involve you in communities where dickheads do some daft shit to their carz fo streets yo
• Older cars save a poor Congalese boy from digging the dirt with their bare hands for a bit of cobalt
• The functions of an older car are more mechanical with less hiding behind a computer than new cars
• Depending on the condition of the old car, people can tend to give you space on the road - as they're scared you'll hit them judging by the state of the body work

Cons:

• Part availability, depending on the car, can be problematic
• New cars have that new car smell which you can never, ever, re-create
• Tax man doesn't fuck you as much as they do with an older car, pricks.
• Drive-by-wire is a fucking abomination and destroys the driving experience, can put you in unsafe positions
• Older cars can put you at the mercy of the Extinction Rebellion bed wetters
• Element of maintenance roulette - has the car been well looked after mechanically
• New cars improve local air quality at the expense of world pollution

While out of the tail pipe the emissions might be cleaner, the total environmental damage the new cars cause doesn't make them a better proposition. You also see a lot of studies extolling the virtues of electric cars, but often in the small print a lot of the figures are based on estimates on best case scenarios. 

Sure, my Land Cruiser is the high end of emissions, it's 16 years old. It'll go for another 10 years at least. Will a Tesla last 26 years? Maybe, doubtful but maybe. At which point, things like charging technologies, cost of replacement batteries, and even proprietary methods to control the car's computer when fixing it  will mean it's not economically viable to keep them going. To some extent that happens already with older cars, but I don't think there's a fat lot on an older car that 100% requires a computer to fix it.

The biggest con for me though is the drive-by-wire. My wife's Mercedes has this, and I hate the fact that I am pushing the accelerator and I notice the delay between my foot press and the engine. Same when I throw it in to reverse, there's a noticeable lag. 

Dbw delay is a merc thing . Most cars have had it from 2000 onwards and 99% feel fine to drive imo 

[CaptainBoom]

Sorry, wall of text as I got a bit verbose.

To shite or not to shite, that is the question...  I think there are as many answers to this as there are people, experiences of shite ownership can vary so dramatically.  From the 'I paid £50 for this xxxx 10 years ago and all it's ever needed is one alternator belt' to the 'This piece of shit yyyy cost me £4000 to purchase and then in six months cost me that again to fix an ABS unit (or whatever)'. 

A lot of it is borne from expectations.  I reckon (and I have little other than anecdotal evidence from colleagues and friends) that there must be a considerable shock when having to move into the world of shiteing after driving a PCP box/company car/nearly new/driving school car.  I mean, cars have come along a fair bit in the last 30 years, but it's mostly in (what I call) the toys department; in-car entertainment, automatic climate control and other such flim flam.  Give the guv'nor of the company I work at my first car (a Mark 2 Polo Fox, very povvo spec) instead of his Jag E-PACE, I think we'd have to resuscitate him.  I remember him poring over the dash of my Mk1 Clio about nine years ago, looking at all of the blanking plugs, the hole where the tape player once had been, and the general scratchiness of the plastics.  He laughed at how basic it was and called it about as little car as you can get for the money.  In fairness to him, he got (and still gets) my philosophy.  It was either buy that Clio or resign as I couldn't get to work any other way.

I have owned shite throughout my driving 'career' and am used to the humble nature of the vehicles that I buy and am just happy that it gets me from A to B with minimal fuss.  I'm sure that there are others on here that feel the same.  My expectations on any car that I purchase are always rock bottom, like many shiters, I've bought cars with running faults, galloping rot, minging interiors and bald tyres (and sometimes all four criteria at the same time).  I base my opinion on a potential purchase by the following:

• Will it get me home?
• How much it is going to bend me over in the first six months?
• How much I can fix with my bare hands with basic tools and diagnosis/help* from the internet?
• How many of the issues can I just live with?

As others have said, shiteing is made much easier if:

• You can fix issues oneself; time, patience and calloused knuckles when applied correctly can save a small fortune.  If I had used a garage for all of my cars issues over the last 10 years, I'd be in a much worse situation financially than I am now (i.e. completely fucked instead of mildly fucked). 
• You rely on the car for work or other things, then have a spare car on a driveway/kerbside.  I don't follow my own advice here, but I'm working on it!
• You have an attitude of not caring what others think, and having immediate family who agree with you.  My kids have a very open-minded attitude to the stuff I drive, they are just happy that it allows us to go out to the seaside or whatever, it doesn't have to transport us in sublime comfort or style.  My neighbours don't give two hoots over what is on the kerbside, they know I work in a factory and don't bring home much bread, but am good with my hands.  My family think I'm eccentric but understand my philosophy.  I grew up in a household with not much cash to spare, my Dad had cars that varied in shittiness and at some points, no car at all.  My father-in-law moved to this country in the 60's and didn't have a car in a garage, he lived in a garage for three years.

On the other hand, there have been times when dealing with some utterly grotty jobs, like stripping my crashed Volvo before it was scrapped, or replacing it's brake pipes three months earlier, where I wish I'd just bought a Duster on PCP.  Like most feelings of negativity and despair, I recognise them for what they are, ignore them and they fade away once I lower the car to the ground and get to drive it again.  When it comes time to sell the car/scrap it, my unscientific rule of thumb for what constitutes good value for shite is thus:

1. Purchase price + parts needed to make roadworthy/less awful place to be + tyres (only if they were knackered when the car was purchased) = total cost (not including tools which have future value, i.e. can be used again or re-sold).
2. deduct £50 for each month of trouble-free motoring, ignore tyre costs if due to punctures or wear after a few months after purchase, fuel, tax and insurance (unless they are eye-wateringly worse than anything else I have owned).  Deduct final sale price/scrap value.
3. If total cost - £50 per month - sale price is a postive number, then it hasn't been a great car.  If it's < £0.00 then it's truly a beater of distinctionand another of the same type and condition should be sought immediately

I also agree with the philosophy that we need people to buy new cars, otherwise in 10-20 years time there will be no shite for us to buy.  As long as that machine is being fed, I don't care.  I'm not a shite evangelist, I'm not knocking on people's doors handing over a copy of Jalopy magazine insisting that they pray at the altar of shite (which would have a knackered series Land Rover on it).  If they want to lease a new car and hand it back after three years, rinse and repeat, that's fine by me.  I don't think of myself better than them because I have a different way of living.  What they might think of me, I couldn't give a tinker's cuss about frankly.